The Why, What, and How of Blogger Outreach for Your&nbspClients

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

I. Why you should care about blogger outreach

I work at Distilled as part of the Promotions Team where much of what I do is working with bloggers. My job in a nutshell is to make the right demographic aware of my client's product/services.

When new B2C clients ask me what the benefits are of working with bloggers, I usually say something to the effect of: it's about marketing to people who will tell others about you (think word-of-mouth marketing).

Outreach let's you tap into influencers' reach and communities to get the right niche of people talking about your business, which ultimately impacts product/service trust and consumer purchasing behavior.

But, unless you're a smooth talker (which, I'm definitely not), then this elevator pitch won't be enough to convince your client to go with blogger outreach promotion. So instead, I've broken down 3 main talking points of why your B2C clients should want to work with bloggers.

Bloggers are mainly influencers

Influencers can be anyone, from celebrities to your next door neighbor. But what's interesting to note is that Technorati
reports influencers are mostly bloggers, as 86% of influencers have blogs and 88% of influencers say they blog for themselves.

And while not everyone who blogs is considered an influencer by definition, bloggers with smaller communities are proving more influential than their celebrity counterparts, as Technorati also reports 54% of consumers believe that the smaller the community, the greater the influence.

All in all: bloggers, even the smaller community ones, are influential.

When looking more specifically at demographics, Nielsen
reports that most bloggers are women, and 1 in 3 are moms. Overall, 52% of bloggers are parents. This is why you've probably heard the term "mommy blogger". But more importantly, this large demographic is perfect to tap into with family-friendly B2C clients.

Bloggers are trustworthy sources for product/service research

When consumers want to learn more about products they're thinking of purchasing, IPSOS
says 61% of global Internet users do their product research online.

Technorati
reports that 31% of online shoppers are influenced by blogs (and only 56% are influenced by the retail sites themselves, so that's significant).

Blog posts are especially valuable for purchasing decisions

BlogHer's social media survey
concludes that 70% of online consumers learn about companies through articles like blog posts, not ads. More significantly, these blog posts lead to consumer action, where 61% of online consumers are reported to have made a purchase based on recommendations from bloggers.

In the same breath, Burst Media's survey
finds that 65.5% of blog readers say brand mentions or promotions within blog content influence their purchasing decisions.

II. What do blogger partnerships look like?

Earned vs. paid

Earned media is free coverage gained through promotional efforts other than advertising. When applied to blogger outreach, it is when bloggers promote your client without getting paid sponsorship fees, post fees, etc. Links and/or ranking for certain terms is never a guarantee with earned promotion. Overall, this form of outreach resembles what many PR and outreach teams do.

Paid media is purchased coverage. When applied to blogger outreach, it can take the form of brand ambassadors, paid-for sponsored posts, appearance fees, etc. Links and/or ranking should never be a factor in this form of promotion, since Google and Bing have explicitly said that this will not be a part of their algorithms (unless it looks like you're trying to trick them into thinking its earned). But if you want a particular demographic to know about your client's product/service, where they might not see the client's ads in TV/Newspapers, then this is a completely valid approach to reach them.

Blogger preferences on campaign opportunities

When pitching bloggers on a campaign, Technorati
reports bloggers most prefer receiving a first look or review opportunity for new products, offering prizes/samples/giveaways to their blog's audience, as well as the opportunity to create custom content.

Give a first look or unique experience: Think bigger than just giving out product for bloggers to review. Instead, create an experience with your product by including them in your new product/service launch, or even creating an exclusive experience just for them.

Give them an opportunity that goes beyond benefiting themselves: Consider including their audience when designing campaigns for the blogger. Also, leverage bloggers' passion and expertise, not just their influence, by creating custom content for their readers, or even by providing prize or giveaway opportunities.

To give you a better look at what these two campaign styles actually look like, I've listed a few great examples below.

Give a first look or unique experience.

This campaign involved getting the online fashion niche talking about Ariel and its stain remover product. Ariel sent fashion bloggers surprise boxes of designer t-shirts that were so blotched with stains, that the clothing designs were completely indistinguishable beneath them. The mystery box also contained stain removal product and instructions on how to wash the material and reveal their free piece of designer clothing.

This campaign engaged its target audience and earning notable online coverage by displaying the Surprise Collection of clothing at the São Paulo Fashion Week 2013. Additionally, women could visit stores across Brazil to purchase the stained Surprise Collection with free Ariel samples to mirror the surprise reveal experience the bloggers had.

Overall, the campaign
reported reaching more than 3 million women with the story, and more than 4,200 Facebook shares, 15K Instagram likes, an average of 1 Tweet per minute during the Fashion Week event and 1,500 purchased Surprise Collection kits.

Give them an opportunity that goes beyond benefiting themselves

This campaign involved a collaboration between eBay deals and
makeup video tutorialist vlogger Goldiestarling to get in front of beauty enthusiasts and to earn topical holiday coverage in the beauty niche.

This campaign featured a series of Youtube makeup tutorials from Goldiestarling, in which eBay provided complimentary makeup that was necessary to create 3 distinct Halloween looks, including 3D Stretched Lips, Steampunk Cinderella and Anatomy of a Pin Up. Alongside her featured video tutorials were step-by-step instructographics, like
this one, featured on the eBay deals blog.

The result was a lot of attention on the professional DIY tutorials, with more than 600,000 video views and over 30 noteworthy posts of organic coverage on niche sites. Overall, this campaign was part of a larger 12-month eBay project where 20 campaigns, including this one, were launched that ultimately
drove 390% growth in sales in one year.

Give BOTH a unique experience and offer an opportunity to readers

Fiesta Movement by Ford

Ford gave away 100 new 2014 Ford Fiestas to bloggers and social media influencers in 2013 for 6 months. Those who received the new Fiestas documented their experience for their followers, bringing greater exposure to the new product launch.

What really set this campaign a part, especially to the original campaign launch in 2009, was that Ford only used the content created by these 100 people for the new subcompact's ad campaign and launch. These bloggers and social influencers got to be part of the unveiling. And while they gave honest thoughts and feedback about the new Fiesta, Ford helped diversify their experience by assigning them missions around broad themes of the subcompact's features. The goal for this content was to be more authentic (non-salesy) and in line with what consumers are interested in learning about with the new product.

The result of the
2009 campaign was 4.3 million Youtube views, more than 500,000 Flickr impressions and 3 million Twitter impressions, as well as 50,000 interested potential customers of the Fiesta, 97% of which didn't own a Ford at the time.

While exact sales for the 2013 remix campaign are still unclear, Ford already has unique
demo videos and content from its 100 participants and has continued to reach thousands with the remix launch.

III. How to start working with bloggers for your client

Technorati
reports that the two top pain points for influencers with unsuccessful brand partnerships are of expectations of their time and irrelevant pitches. Also, what's believed to be lacking the most with branded partnerships is overall relevancy to their blog and audience.

In order to break this down for you to see what unsuccessful opportunities really look like, I've defined these pain points below.

Expectations by brands that my time is freeSolution: Offer a win-win

This top pain point stems from offering a one-sided relationship to bloggers, one in which you ask them to promote your client without offering adequate compensation.

Their time is valuable and the amount of time to promote brands is often overlooked. According to Jennifer Lifford, who blogs over at
Clean and Scentsible, a blog post takes about 5 hours to write and promote.

In order to make it worth their time, offer a win-win situation--one in which bloggers are adequately compensated for their time and effort.

According to Amy Latta, who blogs over at
One Artsy Mama, a means of doing that is either offering great product to review or actual payment.

I enjoy reviews and giveaways if the product is valuable enough to be of interest to my readers as a giveaway and if I am adequately compensated... but the truth is, product doesn't pay our bills. I love spray paint, but it doesn't send my kid to school and goodness knows I can't eat it.

Number of irrelevant incoming pitchesSolution: Write tailored pitches

Irrelevant (crappy) pitches is also a huge pain point for bloggers and one that is easily solvable. Just write tailored pitches.

For instance, Malia Karlinsky, who blogs over at
Yesterday on Tuesday, notes that she gets this same pitch every month from a magazine.

Hi there,

The September issue of X is available on newsstands today! Check out the attached highlights sheet for more info on the issue, and let me know if you're interested in sharing any of the features with your readers.

[Excerpt of magazine interview]

Looking forward to your thoughts!

X

She'd answer the email if it clearly provided a value to her and her readers (could she give a free issue out?).

In order to better your chance that your pitch email will be opened, read and answered, clearly identify the what (project), why (benefits to participate), and how (to get started) for the blogger.

Overall, make sure what you're pitching is a good fit

As seen in the above chart, Technorati reported that what's lacking most with pitched partnerships is the relevancy to their blog and audience.

Lisa Wong, who blogs over at
Solo Lisa, evaluates the relevance of pitches to her and her audience by a brief Q/A.

Do I believe in this company's products?

Would I purchase something from this brand?

Does the brand have a good reputation?

Are they a good fit for my blog's beauty, fashion, and lifestyle focus?

And last but not least, will this be fun?

In order to make sure bloggers answer this Q/A positively about your client's product/service, I've outlined 3 main ways in vetting bloggers.

Check out bloggers' About Me pages

Lisa's
About Me page shows at the top what her passions are, including reviewing beauty products. Below that, she also notes her influence via Press and Blog Features where you can get a better understanding that she enjoys fashion and beauty topics.

Like with Lisa's, let blogger About Me pages guide you in vetting what bloggers you want to work with and also in helping you understanding if what you're pitching is actually a good fit.

Check out their current and previous posts

Browsing through bloggers' recent posts like this one is an easy way to discover if the blogger covers similar products and in what way.

Check out their social channels

Lisa's
Instagram also gives good insight into what type of content she likes to share and engage with.

You can browse social channels of bloggers, like with Lisa, to see who they engage with (brands) and what they find value in sharing (posts, pins, tweets, RTs, etc.) to better ensure you're a good fit.

IV. In short

Blogger outreach is a great way to get the right demographic talking about your client's product/services. Bloggers will not only expand your client's brand exposure to their community, but they'll also affect consumer purchasing decisions.

In order to work successfully with bloggers, though, consider offering them campaigns that give a first look or review opportunity for your client's product/services. And when pitching them, make sure what you're offering is genuinely mutually beneficial as well as relevant to their blog and audience.

Overall, this post serves to gives you a why, what and how glimpse inside blogger outreach. For more resources on specific blogger outreach tactics, look
here and here. For more information on how to measure success of these campaigns, look here.

Have you worked on successful blogger outreach campaigns before? Tell me in the comments below!

About JessicaEdmondson —
Jessica is part of the Promotions Team at Distilled where she is responsible for earning coverage for clients. Give her a shout on Twitter @jsedmond

Great Post Jessica, I Love it; As an inbound marketer I understand the importance of blogs and bloggers but I often found it difficult to explain it to my clients or managers because they always talk about real time ROI. The "why and what" section of your post really help me out. I think I am pretty much prepare for the next time to get approval of blogger outreach from my clients and managers.

Thanks, Nouman! Really glad the Why and What sections will help fuel your future pitch as to why blogger outreach is important. I'd have to agree with both you and Rubén that a lot of clients just think of the immediate results before budging. While blogger outreach is more of a longer term benefit and one that can take some time to carry out (like that Ford example), the benefits ARE in fact there. :)

Hi Sagar--Thanks for asking! As a good point of reference, check out the Solo Lisa example from above. She is a beauty and fashion blogger. When pitching to her and niche fashion bloggers like her, first check out the 1) About page, 2) recent posts, and 3) social channels to see if what you want to pitch is a good fit. Then, if it's a good fit, mention within the pitch why you think she's a good fit (let her know you've done your research!) as well as clearly identify the what (project), why (benefits to participate), and how (to get started) for the blogger. Hope this helps!

Jessica, you've touched upon a topic very dear to my heart as I have invested and spent a lot of time doing outreach for clients over the past several months.

I really love how you included using social media for outreach, I particularly believe Instagram is undertapped as it is extremely personal hence, the connection you can build through Instagram works well more than a tweet or an email as bloggers are prone to receiving multiple pitches through these channels.

We've particularly been able to score few wins using Instagram for outreach so this is definitely great to see.

Using social channels to sniff out good outreach opportunities is certainly a tactic we've had success with. I really like the "first look" angle, seems very exclusive! Great tip I will certainly implement that tactic. Nice detail on everything above btw!

Great stuff Jessica - we do some extensive KOL outreach in our region here for our client and there are two things I have to chime in on that will hopefully help:

Long term SEO benefits - think this one is quite obvious, but we've found that even for a huge FMCG client many blogger posts will rank for niche and long-tail keywords. We've also noticed that in image search, the presence of blog images also is prevalent and for some keyword clusters ranked higher than a few of the corporate owned assets

KPIs and ROI - remembering that KOL outreach is only one tactic that contributes to your overall SMART measurement framework and forecasting what reach/conversions you'll get for each KOL is one of the essential steps we take when pitching them to clients. There are tools, or a simple task of digging on Google of course, that will give you an approximate reach for a blogger which you can then benchmark against for what type of reach (for awareness objectives) and conversions you can expect. Compiling these into a table (And caveating them of course before presenting to the client that these are estimated) and giving your client an overall picture of your outreach efforts - then translating these to ROI against comparative tactics/channels helps to paint a holistic view. Most experienced bloggers will be able to give you some previous case studies that you can use as well.

Great Post and i totally agree with Jessica, From last 8years i'm working and research on online marketing and now days blogging is very important "this is my personal experience and i seen result", Blog main benefit is new content update, Sharing and discussion.

Moz blog is one of great Example for any person who does not agree with your Post. Thanks For the Great Post.

As a blogger / forum owner I can certainly attest to the lackluster approach that a lot of advertisers have had towards that marketing medium over the years. Some of the emails I have received over the years are down right insulting and borderline psychotic, LOL.

If I had dollar for every time someone wanted me to advertise their business for free on my site I would have made more money off that than actually selling advertising. It's a bit mind boggling to me how business owners that know how much work goes into a business can ask me to give my services for free so easily. Building a community of over 50,000 members with millions of visits a year is not easy nor is it free. In fact, it costs thousands of dollars a year to keep and maintain alone.

What I can recommend is being very specific in your request. The "can you advertise my product" emails quickly turns into the blogger / forum owner having to list out all of the ways they can advertise, and this goes back and forth before even remotely reaching a deal. Know what you want, be prepared to pay for it, and know what it's worth. You will make the site owner happy and that can translate into freebies and a better relationship.

It is one of the few very good articles I've read about Blogging and their word-of-mouth effect from which businesses can get great mileage. I personally feel that good bloggers having good following can also present businesses in the most natural manner, without revealing their selling motive to their audience. However, some of the blogs I've come across personally promoted businesses very bluntly and not in a subtle manner or in a natural manner. In these cases I'm talking about the blogger gave the entire post on describing the product and its benefits not even uttering a single word against the product as if the product is God (a notion that points to 100 per cent genuine), which in real human world is impossible. Just shared my viewpoint.

Prospecting tools (like GroupHigh, CisionPoint, etc.) will be your best friend for finding the right blogger/publisher. Also, once you find the perfect blogger for your brand's audience, check out that blogger's blog roll and who frequently comments on their posts to help you find similar influencers. Hope this helps!

Great article and a tonne of tips I'll be implementing into my strategy for certain.

One blogger outreach program I've been going on for a while now is using Facebook, my personal Facebook page too. It really just consists of me finding the company/bloggers Facebook page and sending them a message asking about guest contribution opportunities or whatever my goal my be.

I'm going to sit down and work it out as I'm super curious to see the actual numbers for the results but so far its been a huge hit in terms of getting replies and opportunities.

Nice read, Jessica. Love the ethical approach and how you hit the big benefits of building community, building brand advocates and reaching your target audience whilst barely mentioning link building (which is a helpful by-product). One question: blogger outreach should be a tailored, personal process, but can you recommend any tools for researching the best bloggers and measuring campaigns?

Thanks for the kind feedback, Hugh! As far as helpful tools go, our team uses BuzzStream (http://www.buzzstream.com/), which keeps our contacts organized and ensures our team isn't duplicating outreach efforts. We also use SharedCount (http://www.sharedcount.com/) to track social engagement with posts, along with TweetReach (http://tweetreach.com/), and we use GA for finding how much traffic these blogger promotions have sent and also overall traffic increases during our outreach pushes. Also check out Kelsey Libert, Richard Baxter, and Paddy Moogan Moz posts for more in-depth outreach tools/processes. :)

Agree with you Jessica, blogging about products is the very effective way to express your views about product, but I am afraid the usage of blogging is these days are more about getting backlinks. However, I suggest the right way to use blogging still work wonder.

Very well written post Jessica. Thank you for pointing out all those factors that enhance the purchasing behavior of the people. I will highlight the most important thing for me: "get the right niche of people talking about your business". Almost anything depends on that!

Really interesting article with some great tips. I have had this same conversation a hundred times. Often the sticking point with clients is when they miss the bigger picture and expect blogs to directly drive sales.

Thanks for the kind words, Brett! Nouman and Rubén also had similar thoughts about clients only considering immediate benefits. Seems to be a common obstacle for many of us. :) But hopefully this article and others like it help fuel your future conversations about blogger promotion. It's not about 1 blog post = $$ now, but more about long-term benefits of influencers engaging with the brand (Ford's campaigns take months to complete but result in huge awareness and sales afterwards).

Great tips Jessica! I usually talk about products in my blog, but only if works fine to me, because is very stupid to recommend something if is not good; your reader will know it... For this, the first best customer have to be a blogger in the XXI century. :-)

Definitely appreciate your perspective on being authentic and only reviewing products that you genuinely like and use. I think this is something marketers/clients should consider before outreaching to bloggers (is my product/service a good fit?).

You have pointed out some real useful things for running a successful blogger outreach. The example you have shared of Ariel and their tactic to engage the bloggers, it is totally commendable. Somewhere down the lane, we forget that bloggers are also human beings. They express, feel and experience things just like any ordinary human. And it is our natural instinct to always go for something which has "mutual benefit" or win-win. We probably forget that this is the most important aspect. Dissecting the pitch into why, why and how is crucial. According to my opinion WHY is the most critical one here.

Just a real example, recently I have bought a Nokia phone and had some technical problem, an apps didn't work well. I frustrated and search for the solution. I got many blogs on Top rather then website for that particular search. I followed the steps mentioned in the Blogs and now The Apps is working fine. People still have more Trust on Blogs rather than Forums, etc.

Unfortunately nowadays it is really difficult to convince a blogger to write about you`re product, unless you pay him a lot of money. I mean, that is the situation in my country...there are a lot of bloggers that ask for an article a lot of money....sometimes it is cheaper to pay an article in a newspaper.

Hi Ramona--thanks for bringing this up! I definitely agree with you that getting bloggers to promote your client's product/services for free is tough. But instead of angling the conversation like what the blogger can do for your client, think about how your client can offer a mutually beneficial relationship. Bloggers are more likely to promote something if there is a genuine benefit for them and even their readers. As we saw with Jenn from Clean and Scentsible, writing and social promoting a post takes a lot of their time. But if you can't pay them for their time, then another way to offer benefit is to give an exclusive, first look experience to that blogger and offer a similar experience to their readers. You can do this via new product/service launches or hosting events, etc. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the detailed post on blogger outreach. Yesterday only I started writing pitch for bloggers & thankfully it got rejected by my seniors. And now I read your post & found what I was doing wrong. Like you said in the post write tailored pitches which I was missing. I hope this time I'll create a perfect pitch for blogger.

Thanks for providing so many good examples of blogger outreach programs.

As I was reading however, my mind wandered back to a YouTube video Matt Cutts made back in March entitled "What is a "paid link"?". The examples you described all have materialistic value which can equate to a 'paid link', as Matt Cutts describes.

I assume outreaching to blogs this way is all for the traffic it would provide and not the links as the links would all have to be no-followed since you have given something away in exchange for for exposure.

Yea I wonder about this as well. Bloggers, quite rightly, want to get paid for what they do.

If you're not offering them payment or compensation, it's basically impossible to receive a link or even a citation. And, if you do pay/ compensate and they disclose this - the no follow link isn't worth anything.

It's hard to see payment to bloggers ever going away, but the links will.

Hi Matt--Thanks for bringing up the concern of paid-for links and Google Guidelines. For these examples, like The Surprise Collection by Ariel, the goal was brand exposure and reaching a demographic that might not have seen the brand’s ads in TV/Newspapers. It was more for a reader to come to the blog post to discover the blogger's thoughts, experiences & opinions with the brand itself. Ariel shouldn’t care about followed links, since I’m assuming there were no particular search terms they were trying to rank for. So any links these bloggers did include in their posts could be nofollowed and it still wouldn't be a problem for the campaign goals. Overall success was measured in reach (social media, etc.) and Surprise Collection kits sold in retail stores during the campaign timeline.

As you pointed out, Links and/or ranking should never be an end-all factor in this form of promotion. But if you want a particular demographic to know about your client's product/service in terms of brand exposure and engagement, then this is a completely valid approach to reach them.

Hi Jessica - I found your article to be really informative and helpful! As a new blogger for the organization I represent; www.kars4kids.wordpress.com, I feel many of your tips, examples, and resources will help me blog better and do my outreach more effectively. I am always looking for new ideas how to get more following, more people interested in our product/services both educationally & donationwise and I can tell you that I frequently am stuck. Your creative ideas here I hope will be a tremendous resource for me and I will share this among my own twitter following of SEO , & social media professionals, content marketing, and any other online businesses who are involved with me.